Ron Belgau

March 1998

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in
looking outward together in the same direction."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I watched White Squall with a bunch of friends last night. It's
basically a movie about male bonding. In the movie, some high school
aged guys sign up to spend their senior year on a sailing ship,
serving as crew, taking classes, and seeing the world. Starting out
as a bunch of cocky, know-it-all teenagers, they learned to depend on
each other, to work together as a crew. They also form close
friendships, the most notable being between the main character,
Chuck, and a lonely, fearful boy from an abusive family named
Gil.

The movie resonated for me because of the depth of the male
bonding. (Of course, I don't discount the effect of a couple of dozen
young men without shirts working on deck in the tropical sun.) Their
life was together, on the ship. As they went through hardship
together, they built up a very strong bond, a bond that was more
important than anything else.

I certainly wouldn't call it a gay themed movie, by any stretch.
There was no suggestion that any of the boys were having sex with
each other, and when they went ashore, they tried to get as much
action as possible from the local girls. But these "conquests" were
emotionally meaningless, and their friendship and camaraderie was
much more important than these escapades. Once, when they were
ashore, Chuck picked up a girl and was in the bushes with her, doing
whatever it is that boys do to girls. One of the boys, Frank, had
become drunk and was going to get himself into trouble. Gil found
Chuck in the bushes, and told him to hurry because Frank was in
trouble. Chuck immediately jumped up, threw on his pants, and was on
his way in about ten seconds. I was amazed that the guys bond with
each other was so strong that they would stop in the middle of sex to
help each other.

But what was even more surprising to me was the movie's emotional
effect on me: it made me want to spend a year at sea with a bunch of
guys. Not because I thought I'd get some action, but because I wanted
the chance to make that kind of bond with others. I can't remember
watching any overtly "gay themed" movie which affected me emotionally
as White Squall did. Don't get me wrong: I don't consider myself an
expert on gay themed movies, and so my impressions are certainly
limited to the movies I've watched. But I was surprised at my
reaction: why would I be so moved by a bunch of straight guys
becoming close friends?

I think part of the reason is that a lot of relationships in gay
themed movies look like the quickie, emotionally empty relationships
that the guys in White Squall had with the island girls. Only most of
the guys in gay themed movies are too self absorbed to stop having
sex to help a friend.

Of course I'm exaggerating. Not all relationships in gay themed
movies are completely emotionally empty. In a movie like Beautiful
Thing, it is obvious that the characters do care for each other. But
they also have sex almost as soon as each realizes that the other is
gay. It takes time to build up trust and commitment; if someone has
sex that soon, it means that for them, sex is not tied to trust or
commitment.

In a real relationship, it is an adventure trying to get to know
another person. There are a lot of misunderstandings. Falling in love
means walking into a labyrinth, exploring, trying to find the center.
It is slow and there are many false starts. And yet the reward is to
have one soul in two bodies.

Men sense this need for male bonding. It's something that is
missing from our culture: as gay men, we may feel that our culture is
too paranoid about male-male affection. But many of my straight
friends feel the same way. Conservative groups like Promise Keepers
exist so that men can feel connected to each other, so that they can
work together as the crew in White Squall did. I think guys need to
feel like they're part of something, that they're contributing to
something bigger than themselves.

I feel very lucky in some of the straight friends I've had. One
guy I especially cherish, though we're now separated by thousands of
miles. We met one night at a party, and discovered that we had a
shared passion for airplanes. He wanted to be a pilot, and I wanted
to be an aeronautical engineer. That night, long after everyone else
had left, the two of us stayed up talking. We didn't break up until
after 3 AM.

We quickly became best friends. We built two radio-controlled
model airplanes together. We dreamed that one day we would build a
full-sized plane together: I would design it, we would build it, and
he would fly it.

Our first passion was airplanes. But we probably spent more time
talking about religion. We both grew up in fundamentalist churches;
both of us felt a strong conflict between the unquestioning loyalty
to "truth" which was demanded at church and the doubts we felt. My
doubts had a lot to do with my sexuality, and though I did not
immediately confide in him, we did discuss homosexuality and
Christianity a lot, as well as our other doubts and hopes and fears
about God.

I was in love with him. But it really wasn't much like the
physical fascination, or even the romantic crushes, that I had felt
for other guys. In fact, he was probably the first cute guy I didn't
fantasize about having sex with. I'm really not sure why. I suppose
my religious beliefs might have come into it; but the fact that my
church taught that homosexuality was wrong hadn't stopped me from
fantasizing about all the other cute guys I knew. I'm really not sure
exactly why things happened the way they did, but that was the way I
felt.

I hoped he was gay, and was, of course disappointed when I came
out and he said he was straight. I felt jealous later when he started
dating. But when I remember the relationship, I remember our
late-night conversations, or working together to build a model
airplane. I know a lot about him simply because we did a lot and went
through a lot together.

Ironically, I think I often am closer to my straight friends than
to my gay friends. I don't know all the reasons (and to save someone
from writing a pop-psychology letter, I'll admit that part of the
reason may be discomfort over my sexuality that results from growing
up in a repressive church). But I think part of it is that when I am
with my straight friends, we don't sit and stare at each other. We do
things together. And we learn about each other. I learn a lot more
about a person's character by working with them on a project than by
talking to them. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, "Love does not
consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in
the same direction." And I think that is true of both friendship and
romantic relationships.